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Records of the Blind Historian
Study the past, if you would divine the future. 21st Century The 21st century was not a happy one for humanity. Climate change ravaged much of the world, displacing millions and destroying many cities, especially in the Third World. The effects of global warming reached a peak around 2050, and it took the better part of a century before social, technological and climatic responses began to reverse the worst of the damage and restore the old equilibrium. This global upheaval destabilized an already shaky balance of power. It began when China, long plagued by rural and urban unrest, collapsed into civil war. The trigger remains unknown, since the war began so suddenly and caused so much damage to the major cities of China. The People's Republic splintered, and the ripples caused war and unrest all throughout the Pacific Rim. It ended, improbably, with the restoration of the Chinese Empire (the first emperor being the most successful of the Western-backed warlords; his Western support ended the moment he 'restored' the Imperial throne, but by then he was already too strong for any challenger to overthrow him). The new Empire drew on past glory for comfort and security in trying times, and fared better than many of its Asian neighbors. All told, nearly two hundred million people died in the Second Chinese Civil War and its many sister conflicts. Recent Dynasties of China * Ming 1368 AD - 1644 AD * Shun 1644 AD * Qing 1644 AD - 1912 AD * Warlord Period 1912 AD - 1928 AD * Guomin 1928 AD - 2029 AD * Hong 1949 AD - 2027 AD * Seven Floods Period 2029 AD – 2034 AD * Shu 2034 AD - 2092 AD * Teng 2092 AD – 2259 AD * Continuing Teng 2259 AD - present * Tian 2259 AD – present Despite all this woe, mankind was continuing the march into space that began in the 20th century. By 2025, shortly before the Second Chinese Civil War, all the great powers had sent manned missions to the Moon and three had launched manned expeditions to Mars. The East Asian wars naturally slowed space exploration down, but the delay only lasted a generation. In some ways, the great wars sped up the process, as the precariousness of man’s existence on Earth became even clearer. First bases, and then full-fledged colonies, were established on the Moon and Mars, and once the process began there was no stopping it. Soon enough, spaceships were exploring every reach of the solar system and plans were being laid for a decades-long journey to Alpha Centauri. Before that great voyage could begin, though, Indian scientists made one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs in history - the invention of the blink drive. The first blink drive, devised in 2087, was little less than miraculous. It promised a cheap, reliable method of quickly crossing the unfathomable distances between stars. 22nd Century With the blink drive to take them to the stars, and a world still groaning under the weight of war and ecological catastrophe, humans soon made the great leap to other stars. This Great Migration began early in the 22nd century and by century's end, over fifty planets had been settled. Most colonies numbered only a few hundred or thousand inhabitants at first, but every nation that could afford to established off-world outposts on an ever-increasing number of worlds. Life on the new frontier was often more appealing than life on Earth, and the trickle of colonists soon turned into a flood. In 2174, more humans lived off Earth than on it (although this included the old, well-established colonies on the Moon and Mars, each far larger than any dozen other colonies put together); the trend only accelerated in the years still to come. It was during this century that mankind discovered conclusive proof it was not alone in the galaxy... or had not always been, at least. Alien ruins, ancient and abandoned, were discovered on first one, and then several, distant planets. Shocking as these discoveries were, the implications - they were gone, and not from natural causes - were even more unsettling. There were no answers to be found and eventually the issue became one for academics and cranks to debate. It wouldn't stay that way, tragically. 23rd Century If the 22nd Century was the time of the Great Migration, the 23rd was that of the Great Expansion. More and more planets were discovered and settled as humanity spread ever further out. Terraforming technology advanced out of its infancy, allowing previously disregarded worlds to be tamed and colonized. By the middle of the 23rd century, the off-Earth population had grown to such huge numbers that Earth was now just one planet among hundreds - the birthplace of humanity, of course, and still the center of politics, finance and power, but less and less so with each passing year. By the middle of the century, the basic shape of galactic politics that endured into the late 25th century had emerged. At the center was Zhongguo (then including much of what is now Qianzhou and Tingwok) with the other powers arrayed around it. For a time, most of the 'outer' nations sought to contain Zhongguo's expansion, but this "Grand Alliance" soon fell apart - even though it largely succeeded in the end. 24th Century The 24th century was in its infancy when the greatest disaster in all human history struck. 2304, sometimes called the Last Free Year by Old Earth nostalgists, was the year of the Cull, quite literally the most terrible event in human history. One third of humanity died in the space of forty minutes. It began with no warning. Focused gamma-rays bursts suddenly devastated most of the major cities on Earth, completely annihilating the populations. The few survivors on the outskirts of the targets were soon dead from massive ultraviolet radiation streaming through holes torn in the ozone layer. Confused and frantic reports spoke of strange ships in the sky, and abductions of millions of people across the globe… and then it was over. The shattered survivors on Earth had no choice but to accept Chinese aid, as the Chinese Empire was the least badly damaged power, mainly because it was also the largest. By the time off-world forces could react, it was already over. The result, aside from the catastrophic carnage, was a de-facto Chinese protectorate over the entire globe. Reluctant Imperial citizens were allowed to depart, and most did; the majority of those who remained drifted away over the next decade or two and those who stayed grew used to the idea of Chinese rule. Of the vanquished powers, India, France and the United Kingdom fared the best, growing and transforming as the decades passed. Russia's meager space empire struggled along, while the USA soon broke into several successor states (the largest, the United States of Orion, never managed to regain the USA's former power and is a marginal player in galactic politics today). It was a miracle that all-out war didn’t break out in the wake of the Cull. All the same, the rest of the 24th century was far from a blissful time. The almost unimaginable scope of reconstruction didn’t stop finger-pointing, although it probably did stop attempts to ‘liberate’ Chinese-occupied territory on Earth. The status quo was eventually accepted, but not without more bloodshed from inevitable rebellions. By now, most people living off-world were a few generations removed from Earth, making the clean slate the Cull offered much easier to accept. 25th Century For centuries, space had been the endless frontier, a place with no limits, no boundaries. The entire galaxy lay open for exploration and settlement. In 2414, humanity realized this wasn’t true. There were limits. The area around Earth was discovered to be the exception – most of the galaxy was permeated with strange strings of energy dubbed Chan Ribbons. Chan Ribbons interfered with blink travel, preventing it entirely. Worse, humanity was already pressing up against the limits of the bubble of space free of Chan Ribbons. Aside from a tiny pinhole beyond the Lagidze Confederation, there could be no more expansion. While the hopes of humanity are set on peace, the spirit of the age seems set against it. Since the Procyon War, the known galaxy has been mired in what later historians, those of a more civilized age, will call the Warring Stars Period, a time of conflict and turmoil. There have been numerous border skirmishes, especially between China and the luckless USO, and frequent disputes over colonial claims. The realization that space isn’t an endless frontier after all has made things worse. The most recent inter-human conflict was a six year long war between the French Republic and the Eridanus Union which began not long after the War of the Dauphins and ended in a decisive victory for the Republic. What Year Is It, Anyway? For most humans, the current year is 2488 A.D. (or C.E.). But many cultures use their own calendars, and good spacers know better than to make such obvious gaffes as getting the year wrong in conversation, let alone business. * Hindu - Year 5590 * Islamic - AH 1920 * Japanese - 9th year of the Daigiri Emperor, Imperial Year 3148 * Jewish - 6248 AM * Qianzhou – 62nd Year of the Conglong Emperor * Traditional Chinese - Year of the Pig, 5185th Year of the Yellow Emperor * Zhongguo – 35th Year of the Tianyi Emperor